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*WINNER of the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD for FICTION
*A TIME MAGAZINE BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR and A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 OF 2017
*Finalist for the Kirkus Prize
*Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal
*Publishers Weekly Top 10 of 2017

The heart of Jesmyn Wards Sing, Unburied, Sing is storythe yearning for a narrative to help us understand ourselves, the pain of the gaps well never fill, the truths that are failed by words and must be translated through ritual and song...Wards writing throbs with life, grief, and love, and this book is the kind that makes you ache to return to it. Buzzfeed

In Jesmyn Wards first novel since her National Book Awardwinning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, Unburied, Sing journeys through Mississippis past and present, examining the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the powerand limitationsof family bonds.

Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. He doesnt lack in fathers to study, chief among them his Black grandfather, Pop. But there are other men who complicate his understanding: his absent White father, Michael, who is being released from prison; his absent White grandfather, Big Joseph, who wont acknowledge his existence; and the memories of his dead uncle, Given, who died as a teenager.

His mother, Leonie, is an inconsistent presence in his and his toddler sisters lives. She is an imperfect mother in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is Black and her childrens father is White. She wants to be a better mother but cant put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use. Simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when shes high, Leonie is embattled in ways that reflect the brutal reality of her circumstances.

When the childrens father is released from prison, Leonie packs her kids and a friend into her car and drives north to the heart of Mississippi and Parchman Farm, the State Penitentiary. At Parchman, there is another thirteen-year-old boy, the ghost of a dead inmate who carries all of the ugly history of the South with him in his wandering. He too has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, about legacies, about violence, about love.

Rich with Wards distinctive, lyrical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic new work and an unforgettable family story.